To me, when a company gives the leeway to a character stating that they have the power of a million exploding stars, I believe that they've given that character near infinite power, and at any time can give him the power to save a crew of people dangling from a skyscraper to saving a planet sized vessel or greater from total annihilation.
It's as if Marvel broke the mold with this character, and the only way to keep him under wraps is to say that his power level depends on his state of mind, and then slap an agoraphobia sticker on the back of his head. Now once that was all said and done, they'd send him out as an apparent mid to high class 100, while knowing that he is actually quite a bit more than your average muscle jockey, which allows for the same amount of leeway that DC uses for Superman to be equally used for the Sentry by Marvel.
Superman was holding back, Sentry's mind wasn't stable. blah, blah, blah.
Handbooks are not reliable. Of the multiple times Sentry and/or Void have been in or near the Sun, he has never been shown empowered by it and is actually nearly destroyed by it. He just reforms instantly. I don’t recall it stated within the actual books that he is empowered by solar energy.
You see, that's one of the many great things about the Sentry and something I really, really like about the character: the ambiguity.
The "one million exploding suns" power comparison... the following was absolutely never ever flat out stated, but if you think about it, you start realizing how smart such a catchphrase is for the Sentry as a character - and how great of a writer Paul Jenkins is.
Every time you see the Sentry accompanied by an inner dialogue, that is talking about the power of a million exploding suns, or all the power in the universe, or immortality, or even omnipotence... That's a little hint at Sentrys schizophrenia. Sentry is schizophrenic and as such he clearly has to deal with delusions of grandeur, where he views himself as something bigger than he is / might be.
I've watched interviews with schizophrenics and some of them talked about how there were times, where they truly and deeply believed that they were gods.
In my mind it's absolutely the same with the Sentry, when he talks about the power of a million exploding suns. That's his mind making him believe, that he is this once-in-a-lifetime / bigger-than-Jesus / Omni-God-person. But then you realize, that he can change reality on a molecular level and that's where the ambiguity really starts going.
Also no, Sentrys powers don't come from the sun and he doesn't automatically throw out solar radiation as his main source of attack. He can do that, but in general I would say it's just regular heat beams (by increasing the speed of air molecules and in process making them hot / setting them on fire).
I stand corrected though I don’t think Sentry is solar based character. That scene alludes to a photosynthesis effect that would not mean that Sentry emits solar radiation and since then, his power source has been retconned multiple times.
Anyhow, we know that Kryptonians are solar powered, thus why don’t Zod and Superman Power each other up?
I worked with a schizophrenic who would go off his needle and quit, multiple times in two years
Once, we heard him singing to songs and talking on the phone for hours through the walls. Then he was walking in like minus 40 degree weather outside in his boxers with no shoes to go to another motel room only to get mad immediately and leave. It turns out his phone was cut off too. He went to work the next day and was rolling on the ground kicking things into place. He was not a very likable character.
I've always seen that along with the handbooks but the character never has relied on the sun for any type of power up and the fact that Ultron, Doom, nor Reed Richards could not figure out his power source has me thinking something isnt quite kosher here.
The Jim Hammond camp says his fire isn't just normal fire but of some other type of power source like radiation or something and that's why its effective sometimes when it really shouldn't be. (please log in to view the image)
I don’t believe that Hammond’s Power is solar based, so this is one of the several contrived scenes to take Sentry out of the mix by less powerful characters that makes little sense.
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Feb 18th, 2018 04:21 PM
